I have a title for it, now. AND I named both the countries. Both of those items have been on the To Do list for so long, I’m almost shocked I’m at this point. Now all that’s left is having the draw the maps, then color them. Then once I’m certain I’ve gotten the exact placements I need, I’m going to paint them. I was actually very into painting (mostly acrylic and watercolor) as a hobby for a few years, pretty much when I was finishing undergrad and for the first year I was out of college before I was like eh this is stupid lets move downstate and I’ll go to grad school. I still have all the supplies, I could get back into it in a minute. Plus I’ve always wanted detailed maps for my own reference, so I don’t factually contradict myself. These are things to be considered. But anyway.

They say the two things that make people most unhappy are living in the past, and comparing yourself to others. I don’t disagree. But, at the same time, isn’t it kind of hard to deal with something that still upsets you, say 14 years after it happened? Also, I’ve always wanted to be able to give two concise stories that sum up the general tone/atmosphere/feeling of my entire life, from like 6th-12th grade. Right when high school ended, well, you all know what I did. But here I’d like to offer two examples, picked at random from my numerous memories of life be truly horrible and shitty to me during that time in my life. Being myself got me punished, big time, on all fronts, so I learned to hide then I never came back out, again on all fronts. It’s fine, because if you’re smart enough you can use that to your incredible advantage. My whole life people have been telling me they can’t tell how I really feel about something, that I seem like I kind of just go along with whatever and am chill about it. Yeah, well good, I guess, but that is NOT AT ALL what’s happening in my mind. But like, my exterior is a good calm over the storm, or something, I guess? Anyway, here’s two examples of how shitty everyone was to me, unprovoked for the most part, when I was a teenager.

First example – how I was treated at school. I’m going to use real names here because, even all these years later, I really don’t care if I offend them. Two friends (who shall remain nameless because I actually still like these two, and they didn’t hear what was said to me, for some reason) were in first hour chemistry, I was not, but they would convene in the chem lab before school started in the morning along with another friend of theirs who was a MEAN fucking controlling mega-cunt named Alaine who I’D known since the 1st grade, and my friends’ boy interests – Ben who was in our grade from a different city and Josh, who a senior but someone I had also known for most of my life because he went to my grade school and church.

Well, teenage Cassie made the horrible mistake of starting to join this merry band — I didn’t care for either guy, they were both usually pretty rude/mean to me — or Alaine, but I liked the two other people so I went in to hang out with them and not to stand about the lockers by myself, or go sit alone in my first hour classroom with the teacher. Well, I guess Josh and Ben didn’t like that I started doing that, because the three of them never wanted anyone in their group other than the select 5 — Josh, Alaine, Ben and the other two, who were really, overly, weirdly complacent when they were younger. I know why, now. So, one morning, shortly I developed this habit of conversing with that group in the chem lab before school started, I walk in about two seconds into my morning, Ben says, “Cassie, you’re loud and obnoxious and no one likes you.” Josh immediately adds, “I second that.” I looked over to Alaine, who was sitting very nearby, she makes a BARELY audible, “Aw,” noise, like in some TINY part she felt a little bit bad that that had happened, but she wasn’t about to REFUTE that statement in any way. My other two friends, like I said, didn’t seem to notice or hear.
I don’t think they were expecting me to walk out of the classroom without saying anything else, and then remain completely mute during lunch. Because, you guessed it, they were there then too. Josh actually repeatedly said things about how he couldn’t stand how loud my friend Beth and I were at lunch, but luckily he didn’t have the pull to make my friend (his girlfriend, this is actually my Best Friend, this is what I went through in order to have anything to do with her in high school. She was literally surrounded by shitty people who wanted to control her, like her mother and Alaine and Josh. I don’t mean to sound pompously fucking full of myself but I was the actual true, real friendship out of all of that. Maybe they others could sense that, because they did what they could to keep me away.
I remember so well, the night after Ben/Josh said that to me, I was on AIM like always, and Josh IMs me out of the blue and says something like “I see you were quite stung by something I said today.” Like, I think that is it, verbatim. He literally instant messaged me to rub salt in the wound. I did what I did best and completely deflected him. I was deeply obsessed with this guy named Mike who was my brother’s age, and he came into the high school after class had let out (his dad was a teacher there) and I got to see him. So I told Josh that it didn’t matter anymore because I got to see Mike. I was REALLY open about being into him. But in keeping with the overall shitty quality of my life, he talked to me and hung out with me just enough to lead me on. But, I’ve already told you about him, though I doubt I used him real name. Anyway.

I KNOW this isn’t SO cruel or traumatizing, but I don’t know man, I’m 30 and that shit still bothers me. I know it shouldn’t. But it does. So, what do I do with that? Because any idiot knows pretending that something doesn’t bother you, when it does, it probably what gives you cancer. Or at least a lot of problems stemming from your repressed shit. I mean, I guess it’s why I’m so creative and industrious. If you’re both of those things, once you get firing on all cylinders you’re remarkably capable. There’s drawbacks, of course. I mean my biggest issue is all my “substance abuse” if you will. And then the emotional problems, but I mean…tomato/tomato am I right?

So yeah, that’s about how I got treated by everyone for most of high school. And, I fucking promise, I was NOT mean enough or a big enough of a bitch EVER to deserve the way I was treated.

That’s what it was. What condemned me and saved me, and it’s still doing both to this day. is my constant internal notion that I deserved better than what I had in life, in all regards. My brother has it too. The difference between us is that I am most willing to work very hard to get what I deserve, therefore making it something I earned on my fucking own just like I always had to do everything anyway.

So, now, the second story, of the general tone and feeling one had being a member of my family.

Second Example: This was my junior year in high school. I have a job at the same pet store company I would work for until I was 24, I was on my way to a closing 4-9:30 shift after having gone to school all day. We had 4 cars in a single lane driveway at the time, and it was winter. My dad needed to move my car in a hurry, and for some reason I couldn’t do it. He refused to scrape the ice from car windows, instead he would use a Double Gulp cup to dump hot water from the kitchen sink onto the windshield until it was acceptable. He does exactly that, to my car, to move it. He throws the empty (he thinks) Double Gulp cup onto my passenger seat. On that seat is a paper I need to turn in the next day. I unwisely did not save it. I forget why. I was a child. Forgive me. I somehow see the state my paper is in (illegible) and realize that after I get home from work at 9:50 I have to rewrite this whole thing from memory, because I can’t turn it in as is, and a LOT of it is really blurry.
HERE is where I make a fatal error. Well, not literally fatal, but bear with me. I show that I am upset over something my dad did. You CANNOT understand, this was not done. 1) I was to always be the perfect golden angel child. When I was really young, my dad would ask me if I still loved him and try to hug me in front of my mom when they were fighting. She would get SO angry. I still haven’t figured that one out. But I mean asking her would only upset her, and her life is still so shitty, guys, and he would just say, “That never happened” because that’s literally what he says about everything. But I also will never speak to him for so long as he’s alive, so, you know. Guess I’ll have to leave that alone until I can afford intensive therapy. Maybe one day. Back to this shitty winter day that just got way worse because of my father’s laziness.
Well, he sees that I’m upset, and I tell you it’s like a mother fucking light switch, he instantly gets REALLY angry with ME for being angry. That’s not allowed. I CANNOT show negative emotions. Like, you don’t understand how true this is. I’m to be out of the way and not taking up any time/money/attention, but if I’m around I better be fucking perfect AND capable to absorbing whatever level of toxic shit any of THEM felt like spewing at me, and believe me with those three it was a lot of the time.
So now I’m getting more and more upset, because now he’s screaming at me, telling me it wasn’t him because the cup was EMPTY when he threw it on the seat. But if you know DG cups, they had an inside ridge, or at least they did back then, and water collects on it, when you first dumps it out, and doesn’t make it out on the first empty, I’m telling you it was a thing, also, what else could’ve spilled 1/2 cup of water all over my paper? But he refused to believe it, because NOTHING can be his fault, ever (more on that in a moment).
Then, he tells me I better “smarten up about my mood” (I was angry and crying and telling him I had to go to work) or else “we can have this conversation at your work.”
When I was a teenager, on my way to work after going to school all day, my dad got SO pissed at me for getting upset with him for making a mistake, he started threatening to show up at my work to scream at me to embarrass me in front of my boss/coworkers/customers. Because that was VERY much what his threat insinuated. He had a way of doing that.
And, I mention this story, because it’s a time when my brother was actually the cool one. He took the water damaged paper and managed to retype the whole thing for me, so I didn’t have to do it when I got home. So it was over after that, but I remember crying so hard the whole way to work, which wasn’t a long enough drive just then.

Yes, those two stories capture it all right. I guess all fine things go through a refining process, don’t they? I guess that’s what my deal is. Like I’m strangely arrogant about certain things, I do get that, but you don’t understand what I’ve done to even get to where I’m at. Most bitches with highly abusive fathers end up marrying their father (so to speak) and that’s like the opposite of what I did.

But, I have a small snippet of an email to show you, so you can see firsthand how little my mother’s suffering because of him is over. And, I mean, I don’t have people in my life who are shitty to me, friend or surrogate friend, because I have like no one in my life. My best friend is distant in every possible way, which is just her way so it’s fine, but you know, I have no regular companions, besides my husband. If I had to choose between him and friends, I would choose him, but thing is I don’t have to. He isn’t at all the reason I have no one in my life. He’s actually always encouraging me to make friends, but that’s kind of hard because I pretty go to 1) work, 2) grocery store 3) pole dancing gym. I thought maybe I’d meet someone there, but alas, that doesn’t seem meant to be.

I mean, I’m writing a book in additional to a regular working adult life, who kind of lives paycheck to paycheck. I mean, I get the bills paid, but aside from my 10% unmatched 401K I have no savings. Hopefully this book thing turns out, right? Even though, I mean, the only real reason I want to write it is a selfish one. Like, it’s all for me. All the writing, this, the books I’ll produce as the years go on. It’s all for me. I need it, and I like doing it, and I’m good at it. It’s a sword that can be ever-sharpened, writing is. I mean, duh. Look at what I do for funsies on my Saturdays. I get REALLY stoned and watch some Orange is the New Black then get guilty about not editing, then four pages in of editing CF (my book, I’ll tell you what they stand for one day) I realize I haven’t blogged in a minute. So, here I am, a million words in, like always.

So yeah, things that happened to me a long time ago still upset me to this day. I’m not perfect.
ALSO – Josh and Ben and Alaine all grew up to be a special sort of loser, especially the guys. And Josh, who was always SO arrogant about how skinny he was, always saying shit like “Oh, I just don’t like feeling full, so I don’t eat much.” when really he had a typical teenager diet more or less he just had a fast metabolism like so many teenagers do, Josh is fat now. And he still lives in our hometown, unmarried, hosting Magic the Gathering tournaments at the same greasy comic book store I went to a few times with my brother. And he’s fat. Ben, I don’t know much about him beyond the random interactions I had with him in college. He went to my undergrad school for a few semesters the same time I did. I had a sociology class in the mornings twice a week, and I would walk past him on my way out as he waited to be let into a classroom. He messaged me a few times on facebook, because I’m sure when he was fucked up he went through his friends list to see who might be willing to date him. Ben was not at all attractive to me, BUT he’d landed my best friend’s twin as a girlfriend two different times in high school, so I can see why he thought he had a shot. He didn’t.
That’s another thing, I never understood why so few guys were into my in high school. I was attractive, especially junior and senior year. I never understood it. I guess it was a REALLY small sampling of human beings (76 in my graduating class). My husband doesn’t understand it either. To hear him tell it, and I am sure he’s being honest by the way he still acts, 9 years later, that he was attracted to me, a lot, from the first moment he saw me. The same thing happened with Drew (that’s Doug’s real name, for those keeping up), because that was really shortly before I met my husband. My husband never understood why Doug wasn’t into me/wanted to date me. I was like ha me neither. But it all worked out anyway.

So as you can see, no matter what happens now, things are so much better than when I was younger. So there’s that. All right it’s getting kind of late, and Sundays are kind of weird. I only get 3 hours after I get home from pole class before it’s just another work night.